Flowstress and Overstress Approaches to Dynamic Viscoplasticity

Abstract

Viscoplasticity is mostly modelled by the flowstress approach, where the flowstress (Y) is a function of pressure, temperature, plastic strain and strain rate Y (P, T, ). For dynamic viscoelasticity the flowstress approach is used in hydrocodes together with the radial return algorithm, to determine deviatoric stress components in each computational cell and for each time step. The flowstress approach assumes that during plastic loading, the flowstress in stress space follows the current stress point (current Y). Unloading of a computational cell is therefore always elastic.  The overstress approach to dynamic viscoplasticity was used in various versions in the 1950s and early 1960s, before the advent of hydrocodes. By the overstress approach a state point may move out of the quasistatic flow surface upon loading, and hence the term overstress. When this happens, the state point tends to fall back (or relax) onto the quasistatic flow surface through plastic flow, and the rate of this relaxation is an increasing function of the amount of overstress. In this paper we first outline in detail how these two approaches to dynamic viscoplasticity work, and then show an example for which the overstress approach has an advantage over the flowstress approach. The example has to do with elastic precursor decay in planar impact, and with the phenomenon of anomalous thermal strengthening, revealed recently in planar impact tests. The overstress approach has an advantage whenever plastic flow during unloading is of importance.